So the other day in class, Smirnoff calls Lé Assistant over and points into the other studio, which he can see from his chair, and says,
“Look! That fat lady who never does anything, she is cleaning the mirror! I think that I will faint from surprise!”
This was after I had cleaned up something sticky over by the cubbies-
-I cleaned it up-
-me, not anyone who actually works there-
and before I took this picture of my tights after just a few passé relevés.

Check out those inner-knee smudges. Gross.
Not worth complaining though.
Maybe next time just wear black tights.

15 Responses to The staff is very busy.

dirty dance studio floors gross me out too. Where I’m training there are always flocks of dust bunnies, which make me think twice before doing the floor barre exercises or stretching on the floor after class. We do have mats but they’re kind of nasty as well.

What made your relevés so outmoded… or were they relevés passés? Have to love that word order can change the meaning of things in French: propre chambre = own bedroom; chambre propre = clean bedroom. Thus with the relevés. Yes.

Mmmm, dirty studio floors. Those smudges are as nothing compared to the actual streaks of grime I used to pick up at one studios. Namechanged in common parlance to use Dirty instead of Dance in its title for that very reason. (And the BBC made Darcey Bussell herself use there for her Hollywood programme! Have they NO SHAME?!)

It is sneaky like that… I thought you might appreciate the idea of fashionable relevés. Actually, there are trends in ballet, I suppose. Like how renversé is an endangered species these days (& my teacher is self-appointed head of the conservation programme…) because people just use grands rondes to attitude instead.

Mind you, sometimes Real Life French doesn’t sit too well with Ballet French. Chassé you say? What now with the hunting in the studio? And jeté? You want me to throw something? At the thing we were hunting maybe?

a simple swifter would solve the problem. it takes so little effort.
the worst is finding dusty hairballs on your shoes or clothes. yuck.
i hate seeing girls brush their hair in class because i know where all their shedding is going to end up.

I take class at a fancy company studio, so the floors look clean, but the marley holds the smell of all the man ballerina (ballerino?) sweat that all the man ballerinos drip during their 8 hour rehearsals. So my shoes, dance bag, and anything I wear to class permanently stinks. At least it smells like beautiful art, or something.

Bit of advice on black tights… the dirt shows up even more (talking from experience here). We dance in a school assembly hall with a sprung floor (only reason we took it!), so we keep having to sweep away sweets wrappers, forgotten text books and the odd lost, muddy school shoe before class. But to me, getting a bit dusty goes with getting a bit sweaty; makes me feel like I’ve really worked!

Black tights aren’t the solution. Having spent time during each class to do frogs and other floor bracing stretches, there hasn’t been a time where after stretching, my tights have come free of dust, hair, glitter and other flecks of dirt. Wearing black tights easily reflects the stuck-on grime and I can only wonder how studios get away with such unclean floors.